It comes up two ways. An executive starts a job in another state before the house here is sold, or a seller has already gone to be near family and the closing is still two months out. Both ask it the same way, half apologising, as though needing to be elsewhere is an unusual request. It is not unusual and it is nearly always workable. It just has to be arranged early, because the people who decide are not the ones in the room.
The short answer
Most closings can be handled without you present, through documents sent for signature and notarization where you are, or through someone you authorise in writing to sign for you. Which method is available depends on your lender and your title company, and they need the question in the first week, not the last.
The usual ways it is done
- A mail-away closing, where the package is sent to you and signed in front of a notary wherever you are, then returned
- A signing arranged locally to you, at a title office, a bank or with a travelling notary
- Remote online notarization, where the signing happens on video with an electronic notary
- A power of attorney, where somebody you name signs on your behalf
Which of those is on the table is not a preference. It is set by what your lender permits, what the title underwriter will insure, and what the state where the document is signed allows. Those three can disagree with each other, which is exactly why this gets asked early.
Power of attorney is the one to plan furthest ahead
A power of attorney used for a real estate closing usually has to be drafted for the transaction, executed properly, and accepted in advance by both the lender and the title company. A general form downloaded the week of closing is frequently rejected, and it is rejected at the point where there is no time left to fix it. If this is your route, the attorney drafting it and the title company accepting it should be talking in the first two weeks.
What still has to happen on your side
Identity verification, which means current identification and sometimes more than one form. Funds, which move by wire and have to be initiated with enough time for them to land rather than to be in transit. And availability, because a remote signing is still a scheduled appointment that somebody has to keep in a different time zone.
The wire is the part to be careful about
Wiring instructions are the single most attacked piece of a real estate transaction, and a remote closing means you are more likely to receive them by email and less likely to be standing in front of someone you recognise. Call the title company on a number you looked up yourself, not one in the message, and confirm the instructions out loud before anything moves. Nobody involved in your closing will ever send you new instructions at the last minute.
If you are the one who has already left
Someone local still has to be able to open the house for the inspection and the appraisal, handle whatever the inspection turns up, and deal with what is left inside it. That is a separate piece of work from the closing itself, and the note on what happens to everything in the house covers the part people underestimate.
The uncomfortable part
Almost every hard version of this I have seen was easy in week one and hard in week five, and the reason is always the same. Everybody assumed somebody else had asked. I would rather spend twenty minutes on it before there is a contract than explain in the last week why the closing has to move.
The part I will not answer
Whether a power of attorney is valid, how it should be drafted, and what it authorises, belongs to an attorney. Whether your loan permits a remote or attorney-in-fact signing belongs to your lender. What forms of notarization the title underwriter will accept belongs to the title company. I will get the three of them asking each other in week one, and I am not going to answer any of it myself.
If the move is a job relocation, the executive relocation page covers how the timing usually gets sequenced, and the note on what a relocation package covers sets out what an employer may already be paying for.
This note is general. It is not legal or lending advice, and what applies to your closing depends on your lender, your title company and the law where the documents are signed.